


you wouldn't dream of meaning anything to me

by surething



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Reverse Chronology, this is all from victor's pov!! he's super fucking dramatic, unintentional playboy yuuri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:08:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24212647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surething/pseuds/surething
Summary: They clasp hands, ring to ring, and Victor sees his destiny unfurl, as always with Yuuri, a surprise of the kindest nature. (or: Victor retells his side of the story. It's a hell of a lot more dramatic.)
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov
Comments: 7
Kudos: 92





	you wouldn't dream of meaning anything to me

**Author's Note:**

> hi everyone! i decided i have a problem with using dialogue as a crutch so i wrote something with almost no dialogue. also was reading my fanfiction from 2014 and marginally impressed with how much better i was at being descriptive 6 years ago compared to now. yikes. this is in reverse chronology which means it starts with the most recent event and ends with what happens at the beginning of the anime. please be aware of this when reading. largely inspired by a noragami fanfic i have long forgotten the name of but have retrieved this tactic from. and fahye, whose writing is just...*stars in eyes* 
> 
> if you want a soundtrack, the title is from idiot oracle by paul dempsey, and i would also recommend middle cyclone by neko case! okay! thank you for reading <3

_I think we were destined to meet._

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10\. The thing is, Victor likes destiny as much as he likes surprises. The thing is, Victor is a romantic at heart. And, anyway, there is nothing derivative about _this_ – the two laundry baskets that have become one, or the morning breakfasts before practice, eyes still bleary with sleep, or the daily machinations of existing/living/breathing with Yuuri. Somehow, life is still earthshattering. Each mundanity still pleasing, still new.

Sometimes, he is surprised by his own destiny, the beauty of the unknown lying before him. Waking up one day, sunlight barely sprung, he rolls over and without exclamation, is surprised to find Yuuri already looking at him. On this day he is reminded that Yuuri has always been looking, tenderness stuck in the deep of his eyes, unshakeable. And this is the newness of destiny, the _I think I was meant for you before I even knew you_.

The idea of soulmates has always been comforting, a safety net on days when the ice punished or his psyche was strained under the weight of public attention. When it comes down to it, he cannot imagine living in a world that didn’t lead him here, to soft mornings under the covers with Yuuri. Yuuri, who is grabbing wildly at the nightstand for his glasses, legs kicking and accidentally bruising at Victor’s bad knee. Yuuri, who probably woke up to see a gray blur in place of Victor but still looked at him with such gentleness. Yuuri, who finally finds his glasses and puts them on to turn around and rub Victor’s knee and say _good morning._

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9\. When Yuuri tells him, all he can think is that he must not let it end like this. Yuuri isn’t meant for retirement at the age of twenty-four. The ice still kisses his skates like they’re holy; losing Yuuri is figure skating losing a god. _You are not a god because you win. You are a god when people love you_. Victor isn’t stupid. He sees the admiration his lover gets every time he laces his skates and steps on the ice, even if Yuuri doesn’t realize it.

This is why it astounds him when Yuuri says he’ll retire to give Victor another chance at glory. What glory? Victor thinks he has collected enough glories, enough laurels. The idea of more long, arduous seasons without Yuuri by his side on the ice is petrifying. _Skate if you love the ice. Skate if you love the sport._ And Yuuri has the heart of a mansion, enough room for love after love after love. Yuuri isn’t done with figure skating yet. Neither is Victor.

Luckily for them both, neither is little Yuri. Half fairy half demon, he is in some ways much braver than Victor. He digs his claws in and doesn’t let go until Yuuri is collapsing in Victor’s arms after the medal ceremony. _I don’t want to kiss it if it’s not gold._ Yuuri is not retiring. He will skate another season. Perhaps many more seasons.

They clasp hands, ring to ring, and Victor sees his destiny unfurl, as always with Yuuri, a surprise of the kindest nature.

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8\. Barcelona is such a marvel of architecture, cuisine, and culture that for an afternoon, they barely think about the Grand Prix Final. For once, isn’t it enough to have made it to this moment? Here, walking the streets of a new city, hand in hand with a lover, hearts glazed with a veneer of joyful, vulnerable flutters?

Honestly, fuck the nuts. Victor doesn’t even care about the bag of nuts, but he knows that when Yuuri gets that way about something, he should just hold on for the ride. Yuuri needs the nuts. Last time Victor had tried things his way, they were in an underground garage, Yuuri was sobbing, and Victor had just halfheartedly offered to not only kiss him but quit being his coach.

Victor vaguely notices that they aren’t even going in the direction of the nut store anymore, yet Yuuri is still walking with a purpose. _Is this a jewelry store?_

_Just let me buy something._

Later, the choir is singing something angelic in Spanish as they slide gold rings on their fingers. A year ago, this would have been unfathomable to Victor. This glow of lights, this unveiling of the private self. Not yet marriage, Victor knows, but something just as good. The manifestation of a promise. This is Yuuri recognizing that their souls are destined to be intertwined. This is Yuuri giving in to what he wants for once.

Maybe Victor is still thinking about things in his own flawed way though, because, as it turns out, the rings aren’t a promise. They’re a goodbye. 

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7\. As he books it back to Hasetsu before Yuuri’s Rostelecom Cup free skate, Victor wonders when Yuuri’s family had become his second family. Standing fretfully at the local vet’s office, he realizes that everything has changed so rapidly. Rapid-fire Japanese, although he doesn’t understand a word, is now a familiar backtrack to his daily life. When he finishes at the rink, he looks forward to retiring to the onsen and sneaking kisses with Yuuri under the watchful eye of other patrons. Traveling to competitions, even, feels comfortable now that he knows Makkachin won’t be left alone. To his right, Mari looks just as nervous as he does even though Makka is doing okay. To his left, Yuuri’s parents check their phones for news on the free skate. Somehow, his life has slid into place with the Katsuki family. Their warmth brings him warmth.

He came here, not a whim as most suggest, but because he couldn’t stay away. One could call it a tug from fate. Victor is impulsive and forgetful, but he knows very clearly what he wants. He is very rarely wrong. Yuuri is so focused on his past mistakes and future problems that he doesn’t remember to value his present – and all the people who cherish him. At the end of the night, when Victor is taking Makkachin home to the onsen, he resolves not to make that same mistake. At this moment? What he wants is Yuuri and everything that entails: boisterous sports nights in the main room, quiet mornings steaming rice in the kitchen, scrubbing wooden decks in his spare time, biking around Hasetsu greeting locals in a horrid mix of Russian and Japanese, and now, calling Yuuri on his phone where it is dawn in Russia and congratulating him on making it to the Grand Prix final. _Ah, Yuuri, good night! I will see you soon._

_Good morning._

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6\. Figure skating is as much about physics as it is about dance. Force across distance, the work of a blade carving gashes into ice. The velocity of a spin. The momentum of a system, the inertia after a crash. And, Victor privately thinks, the magnetic attraction between him and Yuuri when they skate together, one over four pi epsilon naught. When they skate, Victor remembers what it’s like to leave this part of the function undefined, an asymptote quivering toward an axis, but never quite there. The uncertainty, the inability to take derivative, thrills him.

There’s something more than fact and science that makes figure skating electric and alive – there’s the music and artistry of it. A program can be tamed within reason: a polynomial, a song, they are the same. And – this is why – when Yuuri finishes his last step, chest heaving post-quad flip, hand outstretched to Victor, he doesn’t even think. He just runs. He has waited his lifetime to have Yuuri here reaching out, opening up, letting him in.

Magnetic. Soulmate. This is the fever of attraction, this rattling, this asphyxiating feeling in his chest. His heart a home for contradictions. Tame, yet unfurling. Choked, yet blooming. Destined, yet surprising. _So this is love_.

Victor kisses Yuuri in front of every spectator, coach, and skater at the Cup of China.

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5\. It sounds so juvenile when said aloud, but Victor has had a crush on Yuuri since the banquet. He wakes up in Hasetsu, and thanks every deity that his job involves seeing Yuuri do pistol squats wearing only shorts. One day, many months ago, Victor watched Yuuri do things on a pole no person should ever have the flexibility to do. Victor has since not stopped thinking about the taste of Yuuri’s thighs, dragging his tongue over the thick muscles and light sheen of sweat. Digging his fingers into the meat and leaving white marks that fade to red.

Every day, it seems, is a blessing.

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4\. Fucking katsudon? Victor can’t decide if Yuuri is terrible or incredible for announcing katsudon as his eros. The nerve of him, when he’d grinded on both a pole and Victor’s dick at a public banquet of the most prestigious figure skating competition in the world. Does he not remember? Is he pretending to forget?

It was the most incredible, unexpected night of his life, yet it must be to Yuuri just another man in his line of conquests. Victor can tell that Yuuri is an accidental heartbreaker, the kind to leave shattered hearts in his wake. Victor, who has been special his whole life, wants to think that he is not like other people. The video had been a message, and the banquet had produced a clear request for coaching. It’s additionally obvious that Yuuri is a fan just by watching the skating – the line of his blades reveals traces of Victor from years past. Yuuri needs Victor here.

The skating isn’t enough; Victor wants more. In any case, he doesn’t want it to be like _this:_ Yuuri slamming the door in his face after a failed sleepover, Yuuri flinching when he asks about previous lovers, Yuuri saying _fucking katsudon as his eros._

_What do you want me to be to you?_

_I want you to just be you, Victor._

But Onsen on Ice is approaching, and Victor has no choice but to train Yuuri to dance to the thought of a pork cutlet bowl. Yuuri has no clue that the choreography is about the night of the banquet – that he is the notorious playboy, disappearing into the night with the heart of Victor, fair maiden. Grimly, Victor thinks that at the very least, this has all been a huge surprise.

After a week of watching Yuri Plisetsky slowly develop the grossest crush on Yuuri and realize that he cares about other people (his grandfather), Onsen on Ice arrives with fanfare. Yuuri, whose every move on the rink is an act of love, whose skates are beloved by the ice, wins easily. Victor is almost jealous of Yuuri’s capacity to love and be loved, thinks that Yuuri has everything he’s ever wanted, thinks that Yuuri _is_ everything he’s ever wanted.

This – coaching – thing is yet uncharted territory, glass unstained by fingerprints, buds unripe but carrying promise. Yuuri doesn’t see this promise yet, so Victor is patient. He waits. He wants to wait. He does this because of the irrepressible nature of his imagination, the careful imagining of one petal unfolding, then another, then the rest together until Yuuri’s fleeting beauty is apparent at full form. 

Victor can’t help but think that being here, fingers pushing into the dirt, face pressed to the air in search of fragrance, is the beginning of his adventure. His life’s quest.

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3\. It’s been months since Victor has seen the slightest trace of Yuuri Katsuki. Rumor has it he has returned to his hometown, Hasetsu, and is intent on retiring. Victor, who has by now, seen every video of Yuuri available online, is adamantly opposed. Yuuri, for some reason or another, is magnetic in the oddest way. Unassuming off the ice, he is divine when he succeeds in wrangling his headspace. Or drunk off many, many flutes of champagne. Retirement would be a shame.

Why would Yuuri ask Victor to be his coach if he were going to retire? Victor lets his eyes close gently as he reclines on the couch in his large, empty apartment save Makkachin. He thinks about his new choreography. In regards to love: Eros. In regards to love: Agape. For that night at the banquet, he felt both love and life afresh, a revitalization of a new degree. Like planting a seed with no purpose but to let it grow as it will and as it is destined to. In this way, Victor thinks, destiny is freedom. Destiny is unknown, a liberation theology torn free from tradition.

They say Yuuri Katsuki has a glass heart. But Victor feels like his own heart is getting crushed, new paths of living lost. All this because a man showed him life and love for one night and disappeared. Victor has a penchant for dramatics.

He thumbs through his phone again, considers it, and then types ‘Yuuri Katsuki’ into the search bar as he has shamefully done every couple of weeks since the banquet. He wonders why the banquet has impacted his life so forcefully but doesn’t seem to matter at all to Yuuri. The page flashes, and he expects the same old gossip again, but this time there’s a video. A new video, recently posted, but it already has thousands of views.

Long after he has replayed the video repeatedly, he continues to ponder the message. _Stay Close to Me_. And he did it with such longing, such sorrow. Who does Yuuri Katsuki miss? What melancholy in his life has infused his skating with this musicality and tenderness? Maybe Victor was wrong. Maybe the banquet did mean something to Yuuri, no matter how small. In any other circumstance, Victor would not jump to judgment. But this is _his_ program, _his_ choreography. Yuuri knows it by heart. He’s practiced it clearly, so many times, that he executes it perfectly and lyrically.

By the time every skater he knows has texted him the link to the video, he has already purchased a one-way plane ticket to Hasetsu. This is not a mistake; he feels it in his bones.

 _I think we were destined to meet_.

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2\. Some moments you just know are once in a lifetime. Some moments you know will change your life forever. Victor thinks this is one of them. For the first time ever, the stuffy Grand Prix banquet has turned into an uncontrollable party. In his imagination of the past, anything interesting happening at the banquet would be derived from some unfortunate soul enabling Christophe. Surprisingly enough, no one has needed to enable Yuuri Katsuki, sixth place skater from Japan, for him to breakdance, take off all his clothes, and wrap thick, delectable thighs around a pole Christophe retrieved from who knows where.

The universe is truly being too kind to him, because the moment Victor begins thinking of ways to taste Yuuri’s thighs, he finds the man himself plastered all over his front, doing interesting things with his hips. A mop of sweaty black hair. Tie loose around his neck. Those brown eyes, looking at Victor, really looking, as if Victor is the best thing he has ever seen.

_Be my coach, Victor!_

Victor cannot refuse this disheveled man _anything_. He is enamored. Charmed. Coach is…an interesting label, a job Victor knows in the back of his mind he is not ready to take on. Yakov would smite him for even considering it. In this moment, however, he’d be willing to fly to Japan, leave behind all his worldly possessions except his dog, and coach Yuuri to stardom. And preferably go a little further than that. A lot further. _I will be something more to you than idol._ This is all irrelevant now.

What is relevant is the utter renewal of his ability to love anything to do with figure skating. Maybe this banquet is just the first step. For once, Victor finds himself looking forward to the next competition with Yuuri Katsuki. Looking forward to the future. In this moment the future is so big, so bright. It feels life-changing. It feels like he is crawling out of the tunnel in which he has trudged and decayed for so many long years.

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1\. People ask him what it’s like to be a five-time World Champion and winner of the Grand Prix. Victor thinks it’s like being alive before learning how to live. The pieces of living that are intrinsic to most people come difficult to Victor. He knows how to skate and smile and fall in love with the ice; he doesn’t know how to stop and let his body recover, or carry a conversation past pleasantries, or even remember faces and names. Pain is the body’s warning that something is wrong, but Victor has long learned to let pain blur into the back of his mind the way he tells reporters he has no plans of retirement even though he knows his knee has no more than two seasons left.

Victor Nikiforov is an unforgettable skater. He will undoubtedly be remembered long down the line. But Victor Nikiforov doesn’t want to be unforgettable. This assignation is dull; this destiny is boring. He wants to surprise, to please, to shock. To force tenderness and joy where there is none. To cleave sight from the bone and make it magic. To live inside the hearts of his audience, dust each atrium with glitter and make the space feel wondrous and big. Victor would rather spark and fade than live eternally constant.

Fresh off his fifth win at the Grand Prix final, what feels to him like defeat, he just barely notices when his name is called. What he says next does not change his life. What he says next is not surprising. But it is the moment his destiny starts to bloom in a yet unimagined direction. Victor turns slowly in the direction of the voice and sees a young man, hair dark and glasses perched over serious eyes.

_A commemorative photo? Sure!_

**Author's Note:**

> if u made it here, thank u and congrats. hope u and your communities and doing healthy and well, or are on their way there <3 if you have the time and resources i recommend you look into donating to the navajo nation's relief fund ! also! finals ended for me last week :) time is fake


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